Tuesday, August 7, 2007

All about AutoCorrect

Speed Typing for Slow TypistsIf you take just a few minutes to read this blog, you will master the basics of AutoCorrect for speed typing, and there’s a good chance that your typing will never be the same again.

If you adopt even some of the techniques explained in this blog, you won’t suddenly be typing at 250 wpm, but you will quickly increase your typing speed by as much as 20--30% and the good news is that there is nothing to master.

If you suffer from a disability such as arthritis or RSI, the real benefit is that AutoCorrect dramatically reduces the number of keystrokes and that can be more important than speed.

Save Time and Make More MoneyIn today’s busy world, when there is so much pressure on our time, using AutoCorrect extensively in your typing makes a lot of sense. Once you have been using it for even just a couple of months, it’s impossible to revert back to typing in the old way. It is such a huge timesaver that in future, many employers may well consider the use of AutoCorrect a prerequisite for employment.

If you have one of the earlier versions of Microsoft Office (2000/XP/2003) the simplest and quickest way to produce your own keyboard shorthand is to backup your AutoCorrect entries using the AutoCorrect tool AutoCorrect.dot. When you view the list in Microsoft Word, you will see that what you have is a basic table. You must not change the headings in any way but what you can do is add hundreds of rows to the bottom of the table and fill them with codes for words and phrases that are common to your work. Then reimport the backup table back into Microsoft Word and you will be up and running with your own keyboard shorthand.

AutoCorrect and the English LexiconDictionaries are a part of our everyday life. To really understand a language, however, we need to look at its lexicon. A lexicon is just an alphabetical list of words and it reveals the underlying structure of any language, or the building blocks if you like.

Languages are built up over thousands of years and there is a tendency to make the words we commonly use very short and of preferably one syllable. Any list of most common English words, for example, will include: me, you, he, she, I, a, the, am, on, in, up, down, in, out, arm, leg, head, dog, cat and so on. If you look at a list of common words in any other language, I have no doubt that a similar rule applies. I speak here only of the English language because it is my first language.

The less frequently we use a word, the more tolerant we are about the number of syllables it contains and the less inclined we are to shorten it -- but the process still goes on. Some recent examples include TV (or tele), fridge, PC, phone, car, bus, etc.

Words that are not quite so common are much more likely to be of two or more syllables. That’s fine as far as it goes, but when you then add verb tenses, prefixes, suffixes and so on, you can end up with words that are quite cumbersome.

We can see from any lexicon that a simple ‘stem’ word can produce some very long words indeed, when you add on all the appropriate extensions. Writing or typing those long words can be tedious to put it mildly and it’s only natural that we would look at ways to shorten the typing process.

The computer solution is text expansion. There are a number of text expanders on the market but the system used in Microsoft’s AutoCorrect utility is still the best.

To use AutoCorrect successfully, you must first take the time to learn how to be an accurate touch typist. That much at least hasn’t changed. Otherwise your constant mistyping will produce some very annoying expansions. The other thing you will still need to do is create your own AutoCorrect list. You will also need to grab a copy of the English lexicon and discover for yourself the hidden key to the English language.

Instant Speed Typing with AutoCorrectThe first thing you notice about the lexicon is that the bulk of its ‘root’ words, be they nouns, verbs, adjectives, or whatever, can be uniquely identified by their first few letters, commonly the first four or five letters but frequently less, occasionally more.

If the ‘root’ word then has a variety of suffixes or verb endings attached to the end of it to form a list of new words based upon it, then they can be uniquely identified by attaching the last letter of the suffix or verb ending.

For example, if there is a word ending in ‘ing’ then just adding the letter ‘g’ is sufficient to create a new unique identity. If it has a combination of endings, such as ‘ing’ and ‘ly’, then the new unique identity is created by added ‘gy’ Sometimes though, it's sufficient just to add the letter ‘y’. With plurals you add the letter ‘s’.

That sounds clumsy I know, but an example from my own AutoCorrect list will best demonstrate what I mean. Let’s take the word acknowledge, which can be uniquely identified by its first three letters -- ack. So we have:

And that’s it. That really is it. By using this or a similar technique most of the long words in the English language can be reduced to short words. You have just mastered it in a nanosecond.

Use the First Three Letters for Your Most Commonly Used WordsLook I’ll be honest, complications can occur. Let’s take the word inquire. It takes the first six letters to achieve a unique identity because the next root word in the lexicon is inquisition. This is how I have chosen to handle it:

In other words, I have chosen the first three letters to uniquely identify it because its only competition, inquisition and its extensions, are words that I use less often. When I do encounter them, I use inquis as the root.

Don’t Let Your Shorthand/Abbreviation Form a ‘Real’ WordAnother complication occurs when the abbreviation forms a ‘real’ word. You will have to come up with another, similar, alternative, otherwise every time you type that word you will get an annoying extension.

More about SuffixesThe suffixes -ness, -less and -ful can introduce variations. An example using the words though and thought would be:

As you can see, it has becomes necessary to switch to the first letter of the suffix for some of them. Words that use combinations of the three suffixes -ness, -less and -ful do form their own subgroup but the rules that applies to them are still very basic and repetitive -- and very easy to master.

PrefixesSo far I haven’t mentioned prefixes, such as re, un, in, anti, non, intra and inter. The most common words that you encounter in your work can be dealt with on an individual basis. Thus for me, the shorthand for antidiscrimination is antid because I find it easy to remember and type automatically.

There will be many words beginning with prefixes such as re, un, and non, that you use so frequently that it will be worth you while to treat them as you would any other word. A good example from my own list would be unf for unfortunate and unfy for unfortunately and these two words would be in my list of top 100 most common words so I have kept them as short as possible.

The beginning rule, however, is to use the prefix + hyphen + abbreviation. For example, if I type pre-adole it expands to pre-adolescence.

If we didn’t have the hyphen, it would be necessary to create thousands of new entries in AutoCorrect, in order to include the words with prefixes. By using the hyphen, it is only necessary to add prefixes to your existing abbreviations. You can then quickly backspace and remove the hyphen if you wish.

For example, you could type pre-hospn for pre-hospitalisation and decide to leave it as it is, or type pre-dispn for pre-disposition, and decide to take the hyphen out.

Other examples from my own list include unp for unpopular and unpd for unpopulated because I type those words fairly frequently. On the other hand, I use popu for popular and popud for populated. Note that I couldn’t use pop for the shorthand root word because it is a ‘real’ word in its own right. That’s the great thing about AutoCorrect. It’s flexible enough to allow for individuality. You can come up with your own gee-whiz-bang list that suits your individual needs.

Backing Up Your AutoCorrect EntriesYour own unique AutoCorrect list for your Microsoft Office documents will be stored in an MSO (number) .acl file and you will need to back it up regularly so that you don’t lose it. With the Australian version of Microsoft Office 2000 the .acl file is MSO3081 for the Australian Language.

For other versions and other languages, add a batch of entries to AutoCorrect then do a Windows Search on .acl (stands for AutoCorrect List). You will find several files, each one allocated to a different language, such as US (American) or International English. The file that keeps getting bigger every time you add AutoCorrect entries is obviously the one you are using and you will need to back up from time to time.

If entries have been saved as formatted text, they will be saved in the Normal template.A very useful way to backup your AutoCorrect entries, however, is with the AutoCorrect Backup tool and there is a link to it on this blog.

Why Bother?Most people speak at about 120-150 words a minute. I can’t type that fast and there’s a good chance that you can’t either, which is why when you are typing notes from a lecturer, it is helpful to use this form of English shorthand. It uses an existing word processing tool and its basic principles can be mastered in seconds, with the added bonus that you can tailor it to your own needs. You will type much faster, particularly after you have been using codes for the common long words you encounter. You will have dozens or hundreds of them that you use frequently in your work or studies. You can add them to the list in a bulk batch or one at a time as you encounter them.

The abbreviations are so simple that they have their place in text messaging as well:

h ackd tht i was writg and spelg evg corry. (34 characters)

The only difference is that in a normal word doc, it will expand automatically to:

He acknowledged that I was writing and spelling everything correctly. (60 characters)

What about Spelling Errors?AutoCorrect, as its name indicates, was created as a tool to automatically correct your spelling errors as you type. It can still do that. The two functions, spelling correction and text expansion, work seamlessly together and both can be tailored to your own needs.

If you would like to know more about the power of AutoCorrect, please visit my website, or you can e-mail me (see my profile). If you have any comments, questions, answers, tips, tricks and techniques for getting the best out of the AutoCorrect tool, I will be updating this blog regularly from now on - and of course I would love to receive a comment or two (wouldn't we all?)